EyeView's Blog

Why I Don't Trust Nielsen

I came across this self-serving blog post at Nielsen.com, thanks to those awesome guys at MarketingCharts.

The gist of the Nielsen post is this. People watch ads on TV. People also watch ads when they watch full-length TV episodes online. Using each of the four metrics deemed important by Nielsen, online TV ads performed slightly better than regular TV ads. The four metrics are:

• General Recall
• Brand Recall
• Message Recall
• Likeability

The conclusion following these results is so delicious that I just have to quote it in full:

“Data shows that web video viewers are more engaged and attentive to the programs they are watching, which is likely a function of the viewing environment and the oft-required active mouse-clicking to initiate nd [sic] continue content.”

It’s not that I don’t agree with their findings. It’s more that I have serious misgivings about how they got them and what they intend to do with them.

“Data shows…”? Really? Which data? I’d like to see those figures and how you got them. Given that Nielsen notoriously extrapolates national TV viewing figures from a relatively small number of homogenous households, I am curious to hear more about their online video engagement statistics.

I’m also in love with the phrase “oft-required active mouse clicking”. It’s like someone from the 1950s has come to watch how we do things in the future. But then everything about Nielsen’s comparison of offline and online ads is so far from current that it’s laughable.

Online advertising isn’t about “Message Recall”. “Likeability” is not an end in itself and should not be measured as such. The majority of online advertising is about actions, not impressions and Nielsen, I’m afraid, has absolutely no way of measuring that.

If you really want to compare TV ads and online ads, you need to measure how many people made a purchase after seeing an ad – a metric that TV networks have been rightly coy about exploring as the results could undermine their entire business model; or at least undermine the high prices they charge, relative to online advertisers.

But we should give Nielsen some credit. They bravely point out that online ads are more effective that TV ads, even if the methodology behind this realization is a little dodgy. The recommendation must therefore be to lower spend on TV advertising and shift budget to online inventory, right? Wrong.

“…the data suggests the benefits of utilizing both platforms in tandem to achieve advertising objectives.”

Way to sit on the fence, Nielsen. It’s almost as if a large part of your revenue comes from TV networks trying to prove to advertisers that they should still be the primary supplier of ad space. Oh, wait, it does.

Check out this report which shows a minority interest sports channel paying $7.5 million dollars a year to Nielsen for the privilege of having its tiny viewing figures calculated, so that it can claim it has viewing figures, so that it can charge more money to advertisers for those figures. I shudder to think how much CNN or NBC must be paying.

If you’re a big advertiser debating where to focus your media buying for the next few seasons, you might want to find a better informed and more impartial source of information than Nielsen.

The iPad and the Future of Print Media

The announcement this week of the iPad brings with it some mouthwatering possibilities for the further advancement of online video and video advertising in traditional print media.

The iPad is more portable than even the simplest notepad computer. It's a leisure device first and foremost, not a work tool. I think we will finally see streaming video move out of the home office and into the leisure experience. Browsing on the couch or in bed means that users coming across video will relate to it in a different way.

The iPad might introduce video advertising into leisure time as early adopters flick through apps while sipping on their coffee and eating breakfast. It just looks like a more accessible tool than a formal laptop.

Part of the iPad’s strategy is to take on Amazon’s Kindle and other ereaders. With a comprehensive range of books and periodicals for sale from iTunes, there is a perfect opportunity to subsidize the cost to the reader of a magazine or newspaper subscription with the insertion of targeted video ads or at the very least video sidebars with extra information about a story and links to other upselling opportunities.

It’s not that these possibilities don’t already exist, it’s that the iPad is the first device in a long time with a good shot at changing the way we consume print media.

I’ve never been an Apple evangelist, but the thought of having all my magazine and newspaper subscriptions waiting for me in easy to browse apps makes this a very tempting proposition.

Am I overstating the fact? I’d love to hear what you think.

The Message Or The Medium

The BBC's political panel show Question Time celebrated its 30^th anniversary in September of this year. The format has remained mostly unchanged in that time with a chairman fielding questions from a live audience before a panel of invited guests usually representing each of the three major political parties in the UK and a journalist or representative of one of the smaller political parties.

The show, and the BBC, has attracted considerable criticism for extending an invitation for tonight’s live broadcast to Nick Griffin. In July of this year, Griffin was democratically elected to the European Parliament where he represents the British National Party (BNP) a far right party whose members have at various times made remarks that were anti-Semitic, anti-Islam, homophobic, in support of Holocaust denial and against mixed-race relationships. While Griffin has tried publicly to tone down some of the less-palatable aspects of his party’s manifesto, there is no denying the party’s (and his) roots in the murky world of British fascism.

Prior to broadcast, the debate has centered on whether or not Griffin should have been invited. Some people question whether the BBC, a state-funded broadcast company, should give a platform to a man whom many consider to be an unrepentant racist. The response of the BBC, until now, has been that it is merely the medium and that it would be wrong for the corporation to control the message. I don’t want to delve further into the ethics of this situation, but I do want to think about this distinction.

We know that online video increases engagement for the visitors to your site. We know that the more video they watch, the more likely they are to continue along the conversion path you have built for them. An engaged visitor is a contented visitor and is more likely to download, register or purchase.

My question today is how important is the medium and how important is the message? Is it enough to embed today’s most popular video on YouTube within your landing page to entertain your visitors? How big should such a video be? Could you turn the entire page into a screening room for the funniest clips and hope that prolonged exposure to such fare will cause them to click the download button out of sheer gratitude? In presenting the medium, how much responsibility will you take for the message?

Coming from the other side, should you prepare a video that delivers the right message clearly and articulately, hitting each of your marketing beats and presenting an overwhelming case for people to continue towards conversion and then use an clunky generic player to host it? Do you want someone else’s ads to appear on the player during and after your precision targeted pitch?

In other words, how should you divide your attention between the information you are trying to get across and the method you employ for doing so?

In the case of tonight’s Question Time, the BBC may be able to claim that they are doing nothing wrong, merely broadcasting someone else’s opinion. On your own website, you probably need to focus on the message just as much as the medium. Either one of them can negatively impact your site’s effectiveness, while doing them both well can significantly increase your conversion rate.

How Long Is Your Online Video?

The latest comScore report on online video offered up some fascinating facts about people in the US and what they are watching.

In April 2009, 78.6 per cent of internet users in the US watched some kind of online video. That number blows me away. It highlights the familiarity and comfort that the vast majority of internet users have with online video.

In the same month visitors to YouTube watched over 6.8 billion videos at an average of 63.5 videos per person. That means every visitor to YouTube watched over two videos a day every single day of the month. Online video is not a secret. Everyone’s watching.

People understand video. They like watching video. They expect to spend some of their time online watching video. If you have something you want to say. Say it through video.

Another key indicator for me is the average length of and online video. According to comScore, “the duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes”. That’s much longer than I would have guessed. The rise of Hulu has definitely had an impact on these figures since they demonstrated the public’s appetite for streaming full length TV episodes. In April 2009, Hulu showed 2.4 per cent of all videos in the US but that translated to 4.2 per cent of all minutes spent watching video online.

After many years working in online video, these numbers are starting to challenge the one fundamental tenet I thought existed – less is more. It seems people are willing to watch videos that last way longer than 30 seconds. They may even be willing to watch long enough to hear your message through to the end and for you to deliver a compelling call to action.

What are you going to do about that?